- Daniel Predicted The Consummation
Consider God’s last words to Daniel at the end of his prophetic record. By then, Daniel was old and weary, but all his life he had been God’s faithful servant. God said:
Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end. Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.
As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance. (Daniel 12:9-13) As far as we know, Daniel died a natural death. But many of the prophets died violent deaths because of their faith .Consider, too, the Christian martyrs of the past centuries. You should be familiar with their lives, if you are not. Their testimonies will always stand. They forfeited physical life in the calm and joyful belief that God is faithful and that He will make all things right in the consummation that is yet ahead. They knew that sin and greed and hatred were in control for a time, but their destination was their Father’s house, and they knew that everything up there has always been all right!
These martyrs were aware that God had called a “Time out!” for His own good reasons. It was not that God had abandoned His plan, worked out from the foundation of the world. His plan is perfect—God’s nature assures us of that, even as we wait. This present delay is a time of mercy, a window of salvation.
God’s great plan for the salvation of our lost race deals with mankind’s sinfulness and with God’s own holiness and justice. There can be little argument about what sin has done to the human race. The Bible speaks of our life as a cup with a certain capacity. As long as we sin against God, the cup continues to fill. We sin and we sin and we sin! We seem to be of the opinion that God does not really take notice of our rebellion against Him.
But the sins are cumulative. That is the terrible thing about transgression. Sin in the human nature builds. It grows and grows. Finally our propensity for evil reaches the point of overflow, and then the judgment of God must fall.
There was a time in history when the wickedness of the nations had built to the point of overflow. God’s righteous judgment should have fallen on all of mankind. But at that crucial point in time, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, the Lamb of God Himself came to earth and gave His life, opening wide the gates of heaven. Through the atoning death of our Savior, God was able to extend pardon to all who came to Jesus in faith, appealing for mercy.
The God of all mercy in effect called a divine “Time out! “While His eternal Son is actively interceding at His right hand, God’s cataclysmic judgment upon our world will be delayed.
Bible scholars call the tenth chapter of the Revelation “parenthetical.” By that they mean that, although significant, it does not advance the progress of events in the entire book. But as I ponder this heavenly scene, my heart is lifted up! I do not know what it does for you, but it gets me out of the dull earth, where cares abound, and transports me into another world. I do not have to understand it all to be blessed and helped. The Revelation is rich, rewarding, awesome! It is at once magnificent and terrible, noble and frightening.
We must not lose sight of the fact that this record primarily is the revelation of Jesus Christ. When you look up into the heavens at night, you may see an especially bright star, but you cannot help seeing as well many of the other stars surrounding it. In the Revelation we have primarily the revelation of Jesus Christ Himself. He is first. He is “of the Father’s love begotten.” Jesus is the One by whom the race is to be redeemed ,the earth restored, evil vanquished, Satan defeated, justice established, the alienation between God and us ended. Jesus split apart the curtain that separated us from God.
Yet, when we look fully at Jesus, we see also much that surrounds Him. We take note, for instance, of the angels of heaven, the reality of hell and the great abyss, the throne of God, the souls of the righteous, the last judgment, the marriage supper of the Lamb, the new heavens and the new earth.